Dr. Costantinos Beruh Tesfa Berhe
[Presented to a select group of participants at a closed session at the AU and UNECA with the Pan African lawyers Union last month.]
From Algeria and Egypt to Benin and Burkina Faso to Lesotho and Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda and Zanzibar have experienced multiple coups and counter coups for various economic, political and social reasons. The looting of minerals, flora and fauna resources is a source of grave concern for Africa. Economic adjustment and rising ethnic tensions characterised the eighties in much of Africa. Africa’s growing debt burdens have generated authoritarian responses to popular anger. The linkage to and rising ethnic tensions is manifested in the distribution of power, wealth and ethnicity, especially under conditions of increasing scarcity. These tendencies interact causally. A core contention is that political tensions are arising as part of the general resistance against their pauperizing impact and against the state, which is seen as increasingly coercive and as negligent of its basic welfare responsibilities towards its citizens.
Seen from the outside, Africa is often characterized as a continent of civil conflict, of refugee and displaced populations, of economic crisis; and yes, some of the bloodiest conflicts since the end of WWII have been among Africans (Costantinos, 1996:343). Millions of refugees and IDPs, proportionately the largest number in developing countries, are in Africa. The forces of lawlessness, mercenaries, petty arms traders, narco-traffickers and smugglers have descended on Africa, fanning the flames of war, and profiteering from the destruction of the lives of our children. One may indeed ask whether the state-sponsored plunder of colonialism has not been replaced by private profiteering: the privatization of plunder and exploitation!
On the arrearage side, within a life span of the last few decades, the African state has exhibited an enhanced degree of coercive power, resulting in a pervasive military ethos leading to the emergence of self-labelled “Socialist” military oligarchies through a long and painful process of ideological schooling. A major obstacle to efforts to install and consolidate democratic system in Africa is the all powerful, highly centralised and hierarchical bureaucratic structure; further exacerbated by economic adjustment programs, coups and counter coups, which antedated the current lurch towards democratisation. The organisational imperative of the massive bureaucratic machine is preoccupied with its own survival. It is unlikely that the ‘bureaucracy’ will abandon its control of the state apparatus to elected leaders or respect the institutional restraints of democratic rule without struggle.
During the political transition in the 1990s, unlike the pessimism portrayed by the African elite, some countries though small in number, had already made a successful transition from military-affiliated and backed single party dictatorships to pluriform institutions and practices. Nevertheless, ruling parties had also used the moment of elections to rally the populace behind votes designed to intimidate the populace and being presented with a one party choice. Some had of course slipped into political oblivion by the restitution of military rule. Hence, the objective here is to analyse the nature of unconstitutional power grab in Africa, the economic, social and political trajectories that present the objective conditions for this to happen and the requisite foundations for its implementation. The nuclear thesis here is based on the question: is the endowment of institutions in civil society and state conducive to democratic transition? (Ibid)
Failed promises of ‘liberators’
Guerrilla and separatist leaders who came to power replacing military regimes decided to inherit the tyrant military state rather than transform it in accordance with the national purpose. Having been de-linked from national aspirations and motives, the state isolated itself and became increasingly dependent on the power of the gun to suppress a population that was inclined to revolt against duplicity, infidelity, treachery and fickle governance modalities. The alienation of state from society and the perception of the state as a hostile force have bred a crop of informal polities parallel to and in competition with the state. Warlords and well meaning freedom fighters have politicised local communities, primary loyalties, ethnic groups, and nationalities as a political force to shield themselves against the state and to compete for the appropriation and exploitation of its power (Ake, 1990:4).
The lack of pluralist political culture imposes serious threats to democratic development in the continent. Practices such as free elections, the formatting of political parties, free and open discourse on public issues are all foreign concepts that need to be installed in the minds of the majority of the populace. While a host of other African countries set themselves to attain the institutions and practices that have been the basic ingredients of the Western liberal democratic model; ethnicity and the right to self-determination have come to be espoused as principal sources of political partisanship often leading to deadly internal strife. How much of this has deep historical roots in Africa? Or is it an elite ideology? Hence, the knowledge gap is focused on how the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) can be implemented in light of the problems that haunt the continent: poverty, corruption and economic adjustments.
ACDEG
In the preamble of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, it states that the Charter is inspired by the principles enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union, which emphasise the significance of good governance, popular participation, rule of law and human rights. It further goes on to reaffirming the collective will to work relentlessly to deepen and consolidate the rule of law, peace, security and development. It is guided by a common mission to consolidate institutions for good governance and committed to promote the universal values and principles of democracy, good governance, human rights and the right to development (Articles 3 and 4).
Cognizant of the historical and cultural conditions in Africa; it seeks to entrench a political culture of change of power based on the holding of regular, free, fair and transparent elections conducted by competent, independent and impartial national electoral bodies. Concerned about the unconstitutional changes of governments that are one of the essential causes of insecurity, instability and violent conflict in Africa; it is determined to promote and strengthen good governance through the institutionalization of transparency, accountability and participatory democracy. Convinced of the need to enhance the election observation missions in the role they play, particularly as they are an important contributory factor to ensuring the regularity, transparency and credibility of elections, it is desirous to enhance the relevant Declarations of the OAU/AU.
The democratic dilemma stems from cases such as Burkina Faso where Blaise Compaore had ruled the poor Saharan nation for 27 years with impunity. Was this a military coup or citizen’s demands. The power vacuum has allowed the military to take over and Compaore has left the nation that he run down not to return for fear of judicial proceedings against him. How does the AU and its ACDEG respond to such situations? The Charter must live to its objectives of promoting universal values and principles of democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law premised upon the respect for, and the supremacy of, the Constitution and holding of regular free and fair elections and institutionalize legitimate authority of representative governments. While it must prohibit, reject and condemn unconstitutional change of government in any Member State as a serious threat to stability, peace, security and development, it must create mechanisms for the establishment of the necessary conditions to foster citizen participation, transparency, access to information, freedom of the press and accountability in public affairs (AU, ACDEG, 2000).
Analytical limitations
Current discussions and analyses of ACDEG generally are marked by several limitations. The first set of limitations relate to a tendency to narrow democratic thought and practice to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naive realism, as it were. Secondly, the limitations arise from inattention to problems of articulation or production of democratic systems and process within African politics rather than simply as formal or abstract possibilities. Thirdly, we have the ambiguity as to whether civil society is the agent or object of democratic change. Fourthly, it is a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on ACDEG, with generic attributes and characteristics of political organisations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of specific strategies and performances of organisations in regime change. Finally, it is the inadequate treatment of the role of international agencies and the relations between global and indigenous dimensions of ACDEG. (Costantinos, BT., 1996:341)
Democracy can be attained only if legal texts are applied to ensure full accountability, transparency and predictability of executive authority. Invariably, this means that we need to build the capacity for political culture development even before we go to the polls for elections that may be harbingers of more violent protests. Democratisation is a process of institutional learning, in which state and societal organisations develop a new and stable set of mechanisms to manage conflict peacefully.
Historically, it is clear that few authoritarian regimes successfully achieve a transition to full democratic rule on their first attempt. In a majority of cases, several unsuccessful attempts have been necessary before a transition was actually consolidated and sustained for the long term. Indeed one can ask how one would recognise that democratisation had occurred. Essentially, democratic norms and procedures would have to become fully assimilated by a majority of the players within the political system. There must be consensus on the rules of the game, whether these rule are embodied in legal texts, or in less formal but no less real customs of politics as it is practised. As scholars have noted, democratic rule institutionalises uncertainty. It can succeed if and when all the political actors accept such uncertainty as preferable to the rigidities of dictatorship.
Insofar as inanimate perspectives on political reform in Africa neglect to pose the problem of articulation of democracy as a relatively autonomous mode of analysis, it would consist of a set of activities in which universal concepts and standards of governance are neatly applied to, as distinct from produced or re-produced in African contexts and conditions. Even at the level of application alone, it is largely overlooked that international models may enter polities and societies in Africa through a proliferation of programmes and mechanisms that hinder the growth of open and effective transition process; thus retarding the development of indigenous democratic-system experience and capacity. Whether democracy in Africa is defined in terms of individual freedom or collective rights, government policy or citizen action, private value or public norm, the upshot of the relative inattention to problems of articulation of open democratic systems and processes in itself makes democracy at once the most concrete of idea systems.
Within current projects of political reform, democracy is either conventionalised or sterilized on terrain of theory and often vacuously formalized on the ground of practice. It enters African society in relatively abstract and plain form, yet is expected to land itself to immediate and vital African polity’s socio-political experience. It suggests itself, seems within reach only to elude, and appears readily practicable only to resist realization.
The growth of foreign interventions seems in marked contrast to the limited thought exerted by democratizers of Africa to put the interventions in coherent theoretical or strategic perspective. What is the overall rationality or significance of the great traffic of international programmes and projects of democratisation and development in Africa, the proliferating activities that seem to show little regard for economy of coordination? How far and in what ways do various international agencies, programs, mechanisms, forms of knowledge and technical assistance feed on one another in helping set the boundaries of democratic reform in Africa?
The important issues that these questions suggest are not sufficiently addressed, or even raised, in much of the current discussion of political transitions. Insofar as the activities of external agencies in Africa are not understood and engaged in, their democratic (and developmental) impact may diminish with their proliferation. This can mean little more than a weakly coordinated multiplication of programs and projects which have immediately recognizable or measurable effects in limited areas, but which seem to suspend rather than serve the ultimate goals of democratisation of African political systems. It suggests itself, seems within reach only to elude, and appears readily practicable only to resist realization.
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* The foregoing text was presented to a select group of participants at a closed session at the AU and UNECA with the Pan African lawyers Union in October 2014.
* Dr. Costantinos Beruh Tesfa Berhe, is teaches Public Policy at the PhD program of the School of Graduate Studies, Addis Ababa University. His area of work include participatory policy analysis, formulation and management – local institutions, civil society development, and strategic planning and resource management as a senior adviser for a number of international and regional organizations such as AU, EU, UNDP, UNECA, UNICEF, and countries in Africa. He is author of numerous papers published in professional journals, presented to workshops and symposium. Recently he has written serious of books on governance, resource management and climate change adaptation. He can be reached at costy@costantinos.net
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